Will Critchlow's Posts

I was fortunate enough to be able to interview Google’s John Mueller at SearchLove and quiz him about domain authority metrics, sub-domains vs. sub-folders and how bad is ranking tracking really.

I have previously written and spoken about how to interpret Google’s official statements, technical documentation, engineers’ writing, patent applications, acquisitions, and more (see: From the Horse’s Mouth and the associated video as well as posts like “what do dolphins eat?”). When I got the chance to interview John Mueller from Google at our SearchLove London 2018 conference, I knew that there would be many things that he couldn’t divulge, but there were a couple of key areas in which I thought we had seen unnecessary confusion, and where I thought that I might be able to get John to shed some light.

After the success of running community speaker sessions at SearchLove London we are delighted to be bringing them to our American conferences, starting with SearchLove San Diego in March 2019. Our community speaker sessions are 20 minutes long, presented by relatively new speakers, who we support and coach and then give the chance to stand on stage in front of 200+ digital marketers from around the world.

If this sounds like something you would love to experience, then we are on the lookout for speakers who:

Are San Diego locals (no further than 2-2.5 hours drive from the venue). We want to support the community where our conference runs and help our speakers raise their local profile.

Have some speaking experience, preferably a couple of speaking gigs, and are looking to break onto an even bigger stage.

Without a structured testing program, our experience shows that it’s very likely that most SEO efforts are at best taking two steps forward and one step back by routinely deploying changes that make things worse.

This is true even when the thinking behind a change is solid, is based on correct data, and is part of a well-thought-out strategy. The problem is not that all the changes are bad in theory - it’s that many changes come with inevitable trade-offs, and without testing, it’s impossible to tell whether multiple small downsides outweigh a single large upside or vice versa.

For example: who among us has carried out keyword research into the different ways people search for key content across a site section, determined that there is a form of words that has a better combination of volume vs competitiveness and made a recommendation to update keyword targeting across that site section?

I’ve recently noticed some confusion around the industry on the differences between URL structures and Information Architecture (IA). I thought it was worth clarifying a few points and giving you all some language that is useful when talking about the differences.

Pre-requisites - if you aren’t familiar with the following elements, it’s worth reading these primers before you dive in deeper here:

We’re closing in on SearchLove London - it’s on 15th and 16th October - in just a few short weeks time. We’ve been running a conference in our home city since 2009, and I’m as passionate as I’ve ever been about making our events stand out.

Tickets are still available and give you access to the whole conference as well as after-show entertainment on both nights.